


to you, with love

by artsycat



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, IchiRuki Month 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:05:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artsycat/pseuds/artsycat
Summary: ichigo dies in the war against the quincy; and suddenly realizes how short life is // ichigo’s life in reverse.





	to you, with love

**Author's Note:**

> for ichirukimonth week 3; angst

ichigo doesn’t see yhwach, or sense him, or realize him at all. all that registers in his mind is ishida’s frightened face, and for a second he wants to ask ishida  _what’s wrong_ , until he feels copper in his mouth and a sharp pain in his chest.

this feeling is familiar. this feeling is nothing at all familiar.

he begins to panic; topples over and feels his control slipping from his fingers, as if he’s holding butter with warm fingers. he screams - something. he doesn’t know what, but he thinks it sounds something like  _rukia_ , and his hands reach for someone - something. no one is telling him what to do, so ichigo doesn’t know what to do. he thinks he wants to scream, or cry, or tell his sisters that he loves them. tell his dad that he misses him. tell his mom that he’s sorry just one more time. say thanks to rukia. say  _i love you_  to rukia.

ichigo doesn’t know when he shuts his eyes. he feels hands grasping towards him and he thinks of memories. memories that he clutches tightly to his chest - the past is all he has now. all that he owns. but when ichigo breathes one last time, the memories fall apart; like petals falling off of flowers, falling down like drops of rain.

* * *

he doesn’t believe ishida’s forsaken them.

even when ishida’s wears the enemies uniform, dyes himself in their colours, acts like the enemy, talks like the enemy, ichigo doesn’t believe that ishida has abandoned his friends to the lions as if they were only sacks of meat.

what ichigo does believe in, is ishida.

he believes in ishida’s kindness. in his compassion, in his hope.

all ichigo wonders if ishida’s made peace with it - with being the enemy. but when he see’s ishida’s eyes pause on him - on inoue and on chad, ichigo doesn’t think he has.

* * *

rukia’s always looked small.

tiny; delicate. as though he could break her just through touch alone.

he still touches her though. hand on her shoulder as her eye - the one not covered by bandages - looks up at him and curves into a smile. she tells him to be safe. he tells her that he will. wants to tell her to be safe, wants to tell her,  _please don’t get hurt again_ , but he thinks now is not the right time to have an argument with her.

his steps falter at the edge of the door. he looks over his shoulder and rukia stares back, a question in her eyes. he hesitates again, words caught in his throat as his eyes dart from left to right. his hearts hammers through his chest, every vibration causing him to take deep and heavy breaths. he wants to tell rukia, something. wants to tell her a phrase. wants to tell her the emotions he has whenever he’s with her. wants to tell her - something. something important.

he breathes - normally this time. he looks up at rukia’s face, the violet hue of her eyes all the more brighter in the light. he thinks she looks like the moon - pale, benevolent and beautiful. the guide in the darkness of the night.

he says, “we’ll see each other after this, won’t we?”

a beat. a pause. and a promise.

“we will.”

* * *

ichigo is empty.

there is warm bread sitting on the top of his desk (courtesy of inoue), and the sunset’s orange tint fills the room. he waits till nighttime comes. waits till the dark dissolve between the realms of everything and nothing - and he thinks about the future.

ichigo thinks that the future is bright and strong and full of stars that glisten like silver. he thinks of midnight hours; of twilight, of colours unreal to the eye. green, red, purple, blue, white, dark. it’s always too dark though, never dark enough.

when rukia appears again in his life - the future changes. it’s only full of a woman, with soft, milky hands, and with eyes that glisten like midnight stars. she reaches out to him, and the colours change. he see’s rukia. he never stops seeing rukia.

* * *

when she leaves, it doesn’t hurt.

it hurts gradually. he didn’t think rukia leaving was real at all at first. something made up by the depths of his mind. a hallucination - and when he’d wake up from it, she’d be there again. and she would call him  _fool_ , and he would call her  _midget_ , and then she would hop onto his back, and they would find adventures, and save people and be heroes. and everything would be right in the world again.

when he realizes that she’s left. that she really will never come back, he doesn’t think about the hurt. he takes up poetry instead, and starts counting off days in his head.

_there are 12,410 hours_

_517 days,_

_in just seventeen months._

* * *

when rukia is healing from the hole in her chest, ichigo doesn’t let her out of his sight. surprisingly, she doesn’t complain. more surprisingly, he doesn’t yell.

he thinks he might cry (he knows he will).

she holds his hand though, and traces her fingers on the skin. she tells him things, about how she grew up in the rukongai; how she and renji became friends, how she found out she had a sister, how she became a kuchiki, the first time she killed a man, the first time she ate chocolate, and the time she met him.

when he tightens his hold on her, she doesn’t say anything. instead, she tells him about the future and about the places they need to visit. she tells him that she’ll first take him to the pond that she found in her childhood, and how she would drop any single penny she found in it, just to make a wish.

he thinks about it forever afterwards. he thinks that it is then, that he realizes he’s always been in love with her.

* * *

when urahara asks him why he wants to save rukia so much, he doesn’t know what to say. he wants to say,  _it’s because she’s my friend, it’s because i owe her a debt, it’s because she doesn’t deserve this_. but the words do not seem right, and they taste like ash on his tongue. there’s not a word to describe why he wants to save rukia, ichigo just does.

it’s this urgency, that builds up in his chest with each and every passing day. how he marks down everyday he doesn’t see rukia. he thinks about her whereabouts, and wonders if she’s alright. if she’s been eating, or if she’s been sleeping, or if she’s acting like him; with thoughts about her that plague his sleep and leave him sick with worry.

when he jumps into the fire, ichigo doesn’t think, he just does.

he wonders if rukia did the same for him; not think, just do.

* * *

when the girl tells him that there’s a way he could save his family - ichigo damns all the consequences and listens to her. she’s surprisingly… attractive, and for some reason, ichigo can’t peel away his eyes from her own. even when she tells him her plan, he does not removes his stare.

he tell’s her, “alright, shinigami. do it.”

she tell’s him, “it’s not shinigami. it’s kuchiki rukia.”

he thinks he’s heard her name before. perhaps in an overheard conversation or read it in a book. but the name carries intimate familiarity. he ponders on it, for a moment, and he tests out the name in his head. _rukia. rukia, rukia, rukia._

“im kurosaki ichigo. let’s pray that this meeting does not end up being our last.”

* * *

ichigo doesn’t get along with most people.

he fights with them though. uses his fists and knuckles and bleeds holes into the ground. he worries his sisters, and his father doesn’t say much when he comes home bloodies and bruised. only takes his hands and attends to the wounds.

when his father asks him, “why do you fight ichigo? why don’t you just let go?“ his tone is serious and his face looks much more worn and old than it is. haggard by lines only visible in bright light.

ichigo says nothing. stares silently and the brand new tiles of the kurosaki clinic, and he hears his father sigh, the sound echoing in the room.

“one day, ichigo, you’ll find a reason to fight. but even then, you won’t think it’s a reason, it’ll just be an obligation. something you have to do. something you want to do. so,” and isshin finishes wrapping the bandages around his hands and starts working at the cut on his upper lip. “until then, be careful.”

he wants to tell his dad that he fights because he doesn’t like being insulted. that he fights because of the thrill of it. that he fights because when he wins, he is proven strong.

and ichigo feels strong when he fight. feels like he can protect everyone and anyone.

he doesn’t say it though, and he doesn’t respond to the touch of isshin’s hand that lingers on his shoulder, though he wishes afterwards that he had.

* * *

it’s spring time, and it’s when all the flowers come out to bloom. ichigo and his mother come by the river stream and he points to her all the flowers that he can find.

he picks up marigolds - his favourite - and pulls off the petals from them, watching as they catch with the wind and dance in the sky.

when he asks his mother why she isn’t searching for flowers with him, she smiles at him gently, her hand resting on his brightly coloured hair. “because, my little marigold,” and here she pokes at the tip of his nose. “you’re the only flower i need.”

**Author's Note:**

> please review!!


End file.
